"I'm not disappointed at all, because I think my coach did a great job," Brandon said. "My coach is disappointed. He knows we were a couple plays away in both those games (losses at Michigan State and Iowa) from being in a situation where we'd have been down in Indianapolis (playing in the Big Ten championship game), and that's where he believes we belonged, and I love him for that."

Love the competitive streak in Hoke, and I love that Brandon appreciates it.

Wow, pretty cool thing Brandon did there, very well deserved. Kind of funny how he's all about profits and growing our "brand," but doesn't care about throwing money around for assistants or giving unecessary bonuses.

My understanding was that there was no clause in Hoke's contract saying that he would get such a bonus. Therefore, Brandon didn't need to give it to him, so it was unnecessary . Hoke deserved it, but that's not something Brandon would have done at Domino's, for example.

A guy concerned with the bottom line doesn't jerk around his employees. Hoke did better than the events that would have explicitly triggered the 125K bonus. You don't penalize someone for doing better than the contract calls for.

I think the article is a little confusing. He would've gotten the $125,000 bonus for any second or third place bowls. So if we hadn't gotten the BCS bid and gone to the Capital One or Outback as a result, he still would've gotten the bonus. There is no specific bonus in his contract (if you haven't read it) for making the BCS at large. He DID NOT get an additional $125,000 for making the BCS after earning a 2nd/3rd/ place bowl bid bonus.

It is not really a big deal; it is more in keeping with the spirit of the contract rather than the letter. The contract simply didn't anticipate the possibility of going to a BCS bowl as an at-large without winning the B1G or getting an automatic 2nd/3rd place (Cap One/Outback) bid.

Or it did, because if you're in second place, you can just as easily get a BCS bid as go to the Capital One or Outback Bowls. I think that was the point Brandon was trying to get across in his statement:

"By some fine lines we could have been a 10-2 team in a BCS or a 10-2 team in the Capital One bowl," Brandon said. "The way I think about it — and I think Brady agrees — as opposed to us trying to assign huge values around what could be sometimes more time and circumstance than wins and losses, we wouldn't start trying to delineate with great specificity from this bowl to that bowl.

I don't necessarily disagree with you, nor do I disagree with what Brandon did. I do think that Hoke's contract could have been made simpler by simply assigning him a a $125,000 bonus for the team's being invited to "a BCS bowl game." Maybe the contract drafters weren't so confident in how long there would be a BCS... ;-)

In any event, you can judge for yourself. Hoke's bonus table is in paragraph 3.02(d) of his contract (page 5):

And I'm not sure we're really arguing anything important, just nuances. I'm going to try to clarify my point though.

What I'm saying is that the Big Ten's second place bowl in a given year can be a BCS at large or the Capital One Bowl. Being a BCS at large is not guaranteed (though it might be for Michigan). What happens if you're BCS eligible, but you're not selected and end up going to Capital One Bowl? Getting to the BCS has as much to do with being picked as meriting it. I thnk this is part of what Brandon was saying, besides the fact that it's not in the interest of either party to not play in the championship game.

This is Michigan though, and I really can't foresee a scenario where if we're second ranked team in the Big Ten and BCS eligible where we're not getting selected. May be that should have been what a potentially additional bonus should have been for.

Pretty sure you mean $5,000 for each 5-star, sorry I'm just a bit nit-picky. You may have just been throwing it out there but the only problem with this would be conflicts between recruiting services, who would they follow.

Also, bonuses for star recruits would dissuade coaches from going after lower-recruited players that may be under the radar and fit the system better. Money is obviously the furthest thing from Brady's mind but it would be introducing a very touchy issue.